I’ll just make an observation (apropos given EW’s comment about C’s): at some schools at least, failing someone requires a startling amount of work to lay a paper trail. I taught a large class, and the dozen-or-so students a year who were in danger of failing ate up a ridiculously disproportionate amount of bureacratic time. (Not teaching time, since they had a tendency not to appear…) Outside the truly unsalvageable cases, it was not so uncommon for me to give out a “gentleman’s D’s” (which served the relevant purpose, which was to prevent them from getting into med school.)

This leads to why there was a lot of speculation when that article came out: in order to fail a class, it is not enough merely to be dumb as a post. And to be memorable twenty five years later, it is not enough merely to fail a class.

I so missed bad Eli.

Why do we have different Thanksgivings, though?

I guess because our harvest times are mainly earlier than yours; by the time of your Thanksgiving, we’re all hibernating. Ok, not all of us, but parts of the country will be in permanent deep freeze by mid-November.

Rachel handled Frum wonderfully imho — that very gracious and graceful ending of hers was most effective, underlined how graceless his entry to the interview had been, all that thinly veiled contempt and faked patience with the peasants who don’t agree with him. I remember Frum when he was just a smug, glib, and arrogant young man up here. Now he is a smug, glib, and arrogant middle-aged man down there. I suppose we should apologize to you for that.

We vote today. If you’re a prayin’ type, we could use a few of those.

“An End to Evil” by David Frum and Richard Perle

“Undaunted by the Iraq debacle, uber-hawks David Frum and Richard Perle air their fevered wet dream of a national-security superstate that slaps down uppity Muslims, bombs North Korea, slices and dices civil liberties and scatters the Palestinians like birdseed.”

By Gary Kamiya

http://dir.salon.com/story/boo…..index.html

But to tie my observation to THIS post, I suspect it was easier for McCain (and GWBush) to slosh their bogus economic claims around the O’Reillys, the FauxNewz ‘personalities’, and other media interviewers who didn’t have Maddow’s incisive, analytical, level-headed approach to inquiring about policies. So really, McCain has a tougher media audience, not only because he’s alienated people, but because there are a few new IQ points making a difference.

Heaven only knows Bill Moyers needs all the help he can get ;-))

And, FWIW, with that background in mind, bmaz’s previous post is very alarming.
Completely agree with you about the ’shattered discourse’; the outcomes of such shattering being to costly to count.